


everybody gets drunk sometimes

by kaiohtic



Category: EXO (Band), K-pop
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Fluff, Romance, light humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 19:23:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7814122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaiohtic/pseuds/kaiohtic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>everybody gets drunk sometimes, or, in jongmi's case, they get drunk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	everybody gets drunk sometimes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [junxouji](https://archiveofourown.org/users/junxouji/gifts).



> this comes a bit early, but i’m a person who keeps to her words, so here it is. happy birthday, jun, and despite everything, thank you for almost two wonderful years. meeting you helped me grow as person, and i will forever be grateful for everything you have done for me.

It’s with a hell of a headache that Jongmi wakes up that morning, worse than any kind of headache she had ever had before. She feels sick, too, the urge to empty her stomach just as big as the urge to empty her bladder. But before she can do that, she realizes the odd warmth right next to her. A look to the side and she screams. There is a very handsome man sleeping next to her, but a stranger nonetheless, and he is stirring, too, so she does the first thing that comes to her mind – run.  
  
She doesn’t get too far though. Storming out of the hotel – shit, did she really end up piss drunk in a love hotel with some hot stranger like in all those Hollywood movies? – adrenaline keeps her running to the next subway station and into the public restroom there. Adrenaline only works for so and so long, once it wears off, she can feel all primitive urges and instincts again, and it’s barely in time that she manages to not wet her pants.  
  
“Shit, Jongmi, are you okay?” That is the first thing Baekhee says, and the concern in her best friend’s voice only worries her more. She is probably not okay. No, not at all. She just slept with a stranger – she had her first time with some one night stand she will never see again. She doesn’t think she can remember his face even, except for skin of a fair shade and a mop of honey blond hair.  
  
“I don’t know,” she whispers weakly and plops down onto her bed, an arm thrown over her face.  
  
“Where did you spend the night even?” Baekhee asks. And that, Jongmi can’t reply to. She is far too embarrassed by what has happened because one, she had always condemned one night stands, and two, she had always said that she would never ever get piss drunk to an extent of blacking out and losing her memories.  
  
“At least you don’t seem like some random guy picked you up and took advantage of you,” Baekhee says and pats her shoulder. “It’s just the hangover, right?”  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
  
  
  
  
By some miracle, as Jongmi finds out later, she didn’t get her cherry popped. After a nap she still feels like shit, but her head is functioning a bit better now and she has calmed down enough to notice that her clothes are intact. That, plus the fact that she doesn’t smell sweaty and like sex. If anything, she only reeks of alcohol that she definitely needs to rinse off.  
  
  
  
  
  
It’s almost a week since that incident and Jongmi has almost forgotten it, mostly, because she is too excited for university starting soon. If she ignores that little mishap, so far everything went well. She found a little apartment to rent together with her best friend who is attending the same school, so that is why they are sitting next to each other at orientation. It’s all fun talk in little whispers and quiet giggles until she is elbowed in the ribs. Turning towards the stage to look at that hot guy Baekhee is talking about, she blanches. On stage, that stranger whose face she thought she had forgotten, is standing there and holding a speech, and just to Jongmi’s luck, he’s not only totally the type of guy she would go for (tall, broad shoulders, intelligent way of speaking), he’s also the president of the debate club – the same club Jongmi had planned to join right from the beginning. Well, she won’t join anymore now, too great would be the embarrassment that comes with facing Mr. Club President Oh Sehun, two years her senior and apparently one of the top ten students of the school. Fuck her life.  
  
But of course, with her best friend being a debater as well, she has a hard time making up a reason to not join the club. Even when she tries to explain that they should take it slow with clubs and perhaps join later, starting second semester when they’re used to the workload at university, Baekhee won’t accept. She is dragged off to the debate club, and just waiting for the door to open after knocking on it is dreadful.  
  
“Hello, is this the club room of the debate club?” Baekhee asks, her tone all chirpy, while all Jongmi wants is for the ground to open up and swallow her whole. Maybe, if she stares hard enough, it will happen, just a bit m-  
  
“Yes. If you are interested in joining, please come inside see for yourself if you like it or not. Club activities start in about ten minutes,” the club president says and Jongmi ducks her head as she enters the room, closely following Baekhee. Hopefully Sehun didn’t look at her face yet, and hopefully, he won’t ever recognize her as that smash drunk girl he shared a bed with a mere week ago.  
  
  
  
  
  
It feels like sitting on hot coals. Jongmi is just waiting for Sehun to start questioning her about that night, but until the end of today’s club activities Sehun hasn’t said anything remotely close to the topic of alcohol, one night stands, love hotels, or anything else that Jongmi connects to that night. Sehun even smiled at her as if nothing happened by the end, praising her for her smart rebuttal, and that makes Jongmi feel relieved. Maybe God had heard her prayers this time. Maybe, for once, everything is going well for her. It’s not all just rain and storm for her right now. The sun has come out even sooner than expected.  
  
  
  
  
  
And life is good to her. Jongmi doesn’t think she could ever get up again after being dumped by her long term boyfriend. Call her dramatic, but her first and only love, her childhood sweetheart, the boy she had dreamed of marrying ever since middle school, the boy who she was dating throughout high school had broken up with her just shortly before university started. For what reason, she still doesn’t know, but it doesn’t torment her as much as it did when the wound was fresh. College workload and the time spent researching and practicing for club activities is a good way to distract. And then there is Sehun as well. Sweet, polite and intelligent Sehun. His good looks are only the cherry on top of the cream, so his single status is a mystery to all the girls and guys at school. People don’t even know if he’s swinging this or that way, and the fact that they shared a bed once doesn’t seem to be a proof of anything.  
  
“Doesn’t matter anyways,” Baekhee says. Jongmi still didn’t tell her about that night, but since Sehun didn’t mention it either, there is no way Jongmi would tell. And who knows. Maybe it wasn’t even Sehun. She might have mistaken him just because of his pale complexion and that honey blond hair that he has dyed a warm chocolate hue by now. Surely, there’s more than one male with that look in a city with a population of ten million people.  
  
“If he’s gay, we’ll just turn him straight again. I mean, how could he resist a girl like you? Pretty and smart, one of the top club members. I’m pretty sure he did check you out the other way,” Baekhee continues, uncaring that Jongmi is sputtering. No way in hell Sehun would look her way. Impossible. He was probably staring at Soojung seated right next to her instead.  
  
  
  
  
  
Juggling all the workload and the club activities is not easy, even for a smart girl like Jongmi. Baekhee, too, despite her happy-go-lucky attitude is, for once, spending lots of time on studies. After all, she is ambitious, too, wanting to be on top in her classes. Jongmi had always been envious of her best friend for picking up the subject matters in no time while Jongmi would spend a few hours revising textbooks and reviewing her notes. They both barely get any sleep, too focused on their goals.  
  
In the end, it pays out, and that is the most important thing. Not only did they score good grades, but they won second place in a nation-wide debate tournament as well.  
  
“What should we do with the prize money?” Sehun asks when they meet up the day after. Jongmi is still sleep and rubbing at her eyes, only getting up half an hour ago, though it’s already early afternoon. But she deserved that amount of sleep and rest after weeks and months of hard work.  
  
“I thought it would all go to our funds?” Soojung pipes up, and Sehun kindly explains that of course, most of the money will go to their funds, but that doesn’t mean they can’t use some of the money to go out and celebrate their success – second place is still good, even if it’s not gold.  
  
“Fancy dinner and then we can take it to the bar,” Taemin suggests, earning himself some applause from the rest of the club members. Sehun is chuckling, but he shakes his head.  
  
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Sehun says. “Some of you are really odd drunks.”  
  
Jongmi looks up then, suddenly feeling hot as if someone was staring at her intensely, and realizes, that it’s Sehun who is doing so. And coupled with the words that just exited his mouth… oh-oh. It’s him. And he knows. And he remembers.  
  
  
  
  
  
There are two ways to go about it. Jongmi could just disappear – transfer to a different school outside of Seoul and hope she will never have to face Sehun again – or she could be brave and talk to him about it, possibly embarrassing herself more by asking what had actually happened that night. She knows that nothing sexual happened between them, but did she do anything embarrassing? Did she drool or puke on him when she was barely conscious? Did she say something stupid? Did she do something stupid?  
  
Fuck Baekhee. If it wasn’t for Baekhee leaving her to fend on her own that night, then she wouldn’t have gotten into such a difficult situation. But well, if Baekhee had been tending to her all night, she wouldn’t have met her dream man Park Chanyeol. It’s still a miracle that she’s started dating one of her one night stands, but Jongmi won’t butt in. As long as Baekhee is happy, that is fine with her.  
  
“You’re so quiet.”  
  
Jongmi blinks and looks up to see Sehun taking a seat next to her, the same seat Baekhee was sitting on just now. She looks around the table to see her best friend ditching her for her boyfriend, a thing she should start to get used by now.  
  
“I’m just tired,” Jongmi replies, a half-truth.  
  
“Just tired, huh?” Sehun repeats and Jongmi almost glares at him. She doesn’t like that grin on his face, not at all. It’s too handsome and it hurts her heart. She feels like being blinded and stabbed in the heart several times in succession. It’s too much. She needs to get away.  
  
“I’m going home, sorry,” she apologizes.  
  
“Yeah, you look pale,” Soojung says and Taemin offers to accompany her to the dorms, but Jongmi shakes her head.  
  
“I’ll bring her home,” Sehun says then. The room protests, not wanting their club president to leave their celebration, but Sehun reasons with them, saying that he’s not a party person anyways, and since dinner is over, he will most likely feel out of place in noraebang later, knowing that everyone has bought a stash of soju earlier for that. He’s not the club president for no reason, Jongmi notes for the umpteenth time. He is good at dishing out argument after argument, but apart from that, he knows how to use his voice and sound convincing. Debating is the art of combining logic, speech skills and acting as well, and Sehun is a master at that – to Jongmi at least. But maybe she’s just easy to convince because his voice brings her into a deep trance that makes her nod dumbly to every word said.  
  
She only wakes from her trance as a coat is put around her shoulders, courtesy of Sehun, and then she is led outside the restaurant.  
  
The dorms aren’t too far away, actually, but letting a girl go home at night alone is a thing that the gentlemen of their debate club cannot let be, not even when it’s just a few hundred meters to the bus station that will bring them directly to the main entrance to campus. They just need to walk another few hundred meters then to arrive in the dorms, and seriously, nothing bad can happen on campus – there are guards keeping suspicious people out at night. Only students are granted entrance on campus then.  
  
But instead of taking the bus, Jongmi is walking next to Sehun. Apparently, Sehun wants them to walk back, which will take them almost an hour, but well, Jongmi is not going to protest. Walking next to Sehun feels kinda nice. It’s almost, as if they were dating, though she wishes they would talk. It’s just too awkward to talk now for she doesn’t know what to speak up about, and Sehun seems to prefer the silence.  
  
Sehun doesn’t keep silent for too long though. At some point he starts asking, and Jongmi, despite the utter embarrassment, admits that she has absolutely no idea what she was doing that night. The only thing she recalls is going to that “welcome to Yonsei” party, the first ever party in her life, and also the very first time she entered a club. She was feeling down and upset about her break-up, so Baekhee had easily convinced her to tag along. At some point Baekhee left her to go after _that tall handsome dude with the really nicely flexing biceps_ \- Baekhee’s words, not Jongmi’s – and then she was left alone at the bar. The barkeeper gave her a drink on the house, probably because she looked so pitiful, and that had started her doom. She had more than one drink that night, that’s for sure. That’s why she was so wasted that night.  
  
“You were pretty drunk,” Sehun agrees. “I was going back to the dorms around three in the morning and you just latched onto me. I tried to find out where you live, but you were too drunk to reply, and I didn’t want to end up arrested for molesting and sexual harassment, so I didn’t search through your pockets. You didn’t have a handbag with you after all.”  
  
“Oh god,” Jongmi says and shakes her head, her blushing face hiding behind her hands.  
  
“I couldn’t let you sleep outside either in that state. Who knows what might happen if bad guys were going to find a girl who passed out like that.”  
  
“I’m sorry for bringing you to a love hotel though. But that’s the cheapest option and I don’t have much money as student,” Sehun apologizes, voice filled with sincerity. “You must have been pretty scared the next morning, huh? I didn’t actually plan to fall asleep there with you. I wanted to leave you there to sleep all on your own, but you were clinging to me and crying, so I couldn’t just go away.”  
  
Fuck fuck fuck, is all Jongmi thinks. Fuck. How embarrassing. Did she turn into a sad, emotional drunk? And a clingy one on top of that. Fuck. And shit, she should really stop swearing. This is not the way her parents brought her up.  
  
“And when I saw you again, I thought it would be better not to talk about it, since you would be embarrassed,” Sehun chuckles. “Though I really wanted to explain and assure you that nothing much happened and that there’s no reason to worry.”  
  
“Well, it is embarrassing,” Jongmi mumbles, the heat never leaving her cheeks. She’ll die of a fever if this goes on. “But at least I know what kind of drunk I am. An emotional, clingy, sad drunk. I hate life.”  
  
“Oh no, don’t hate life,” Sehun quickly interrupts. “It’s fine. You’re not the only emotional, clingy, sad drunk. There’s plenty people like that. I think it might have to do with what happened to you that turned you that way? You might be a happy drunk if it weren’t for what had happened.”  
  
Right. That sounds convincing. But wait, does that mean Sehun knows what had happened? That she was trying to drown her sadness in alcohol after being dumped? He must think of her as pathetic.  
  
“It’s fine, you know?” Sehun speaks up again, his voice quiet this time, tone soft. “A lot of people turn to drinking when something major happens in their lives. But if possible, I’d like you to keep in mind that alcohol and drugs are the worst way to get over all the sad things happening in your life. There’s other ways to distract yourself.”  
  
“I know,” Jongmi sighs. Waking up in bed with a stranger did shake her up enough to never want to attempt drinking again. Especially not sad drinking. But what’s worse, is that hell of a hangover. She had been feeling ill for days. Definitely not a good thing.  
  
“It’s just a temporary solution that will make you feel worse in the aftermath,” Sehun adds, and it kind of annoys Jongmi. She’s not stupid, she knows too much alcohol is bad.  
  
“Yeah. I know. And I promise you, I’ll never get drunk because of a guy dumping me anymore.”  
  
  
  
  
  
Time flies by. Jongmi cannot comprehend how much has happened in the past six months. She has finished her first year by now, aced through another set of exams, though the debate tournament didn’t go well this time and they couldn’t get onto the winner’s podium. It’s alright though, since Sehun doesn’t seem to mind. He is cheering everyone up, encouraging the club members to continue on, even without him. Because Sehun is graduating this year, and although he will do his master’s degree at the same university as well, he has stepped down from his position as club president to let Soojung take over.  
  
The most surprising turn of event though, is Jongmi’s relationship status. She is no longer single and is dating Sehun who had asked her out just a few weeks after that time he brought her home. They had study dates in between to research and practice for debate club together, and Jongmi had shamelessly asked him to help out with homework, after all, he had been crushing on him, too.  
  
And now they are here, in a fine restaurant, celebrating their 100th day anniversary because Sehun had suggested that. Who knew that nerdy Oh Sehun would be a cute romantic? Surely, no one did expect that, but Jongmi is happy.  
  
She reaches out for her glass of red wine, wanting to take a sip, when her boyfriend’s voice makes her halt.  
  
“Didn’t you promise to never drink again?” He asks her with a light chuckle.  
  
Jongmi sticks out her tongue. “I said I wouldn’t get sad drunk over boys,” she declares and boldly downs half of her glass. Sehun just watches and shakes his head, an amused smile on his face. He doesn’t stop her another time and just lets her drink, and Jongmi is thankful for that. Otherwise, she might go off for his overprotectiveness. After all, she is a grown up, and she is a responsible person. She knows her limits.  
  
  
  
  
  
It’s with a hell of a headache that Jongmi wakes up the next morning, worse than any kind of headache she had ever had before. She feels sick, too, the urge to empty her stomach just as big as the urge to empty her bladder. But before she can do that, she realizes the odd warmth right next to her. A look to the side and she sees a very handsome man sleeping next to her, and he is stirring, too, opening his eyes to greet her with a smile. And the first thing that comes to her mind is to run straight to the bathroom – she can’t possibly puke all over her boyfriend. Gross.  
  
And as she hangs above the toilet bowl with Sehun standing by her side and rubbing her back for comfort, all she thinks about is that she will never ever touch alcohol again. Not even for celebration with or without Sehun.


End file.
